The F16AJ is a great plane. Better than the tech tree F16A definitely, and I love any F16. However, is it just me or does it get slammed around pretty hard by the bracket? Its in that weird fox-3 but not fox 3 area, but it doesn’t have any good long range weaponry to protect it. Sure, it has 7F’s, which do make it a fun, and aggressive fighter in some scenarios, however it just feels bad given the current meta. However, its way to powerful in a downtier. It slams the lvl 12 F4S players, and it absolutely ruins any MiG 23ML’s day.
Currently, my biggest problem with the plane is uptiers. It just gets slammed by Fox-3 missiles. Furthermore, given how close you have to be to become effective, your 7F’s aren’t effective in the br bracket. They are only good in a headon, and if the enemy notches, or forces you to notch or multipath it, its useless. The flight performance is amazing, and since its not exactly the highest tier you do get occasional dogfights, but its not something one can reliably use to get kills. It also has 60 countermeasures, which isn’t horrible, but its not the best. I would usually use planes like this in Air Sim, but I can’t given its included in the top most bracket. And I don’t need to explain why an F-16A with missiles from the '70s isn’t gonna fare so well against Eurofighters and Su-30s. I don’t know, is it just the BR bracket its in, or is it my skill issue? Because it used to be a broken plane before they decompressed the brackets. But it seems every plane from the 12.3-13.0 BR feels this even a little bit.
Isnt 60CMs pretty much standard at that BR until you hit things like F-15A? I struggle to remember a fighter that has more than 60 CMs total other than F-4E/F with 90 and F1Cs with what, 244 CMs? Its been a while since i played it; and those arent even 12.7 to begin with.
The culprit is, as always, BR compression. You have 29G at the same BR as Su-27 etc.
How so? If you bring Mavericks it’s identical to the american F-16A-10 but a BR step higher. If you bring Sparrows it’s identical to the ADF. You don’t gain much other than being very slightly lighter than the latter.
I’ve been grinding the F-16AJ for a 12.0 GRB lineup, and I can say with confidence,
Uptiers suck, Downtiers are heaven. Dropping 6 kills in a partial downtier then none in a full uptier is crazy. I get a lot more uptiers than downtiers.
I feel about the same, it’s such an odd plane. I love flying it in downtiers, it’s overpowered, uptiers it’s so undertiered it’s comical. Even against the MiG-29 it has nothing. It’s really strange.
This is why I think it should get its unique (and already modelled!) landing gear pylon Sparrows and be hidden and replaced with a Thai F-16. It’d make it more competitive in uptiers, give it the ability to bring sparrows with mavs and make it a unique and flavorful F-16 for those who get it before it’s removed.
Make no mistake, it should be removed! It should also receive its FLAVOR!
The current Thai F-16 OCU has AMRAAMs it shouldn’t have by the way. So if we exclude the 9M and maybe even Python 3s, it could be dropped to 12.7 (air) with a quite nasty A2G loadout. Probably would be higher in ground though.
This game is balanced around very annoying and war crime generating amount of uptier and little enough downtier to give you that dopamine. you’ll learn in time.
Its one free kill if someone who isn’t paying attention is rushing forward. If your objective is to rush the right side of the map, its a handy tool. But if someone is above you with a Fox-3’s just jettison it and pull into a defensive stance. (Which usually means your dead bc you’re right in front of the rest of the enemy)
American standard for over 60 CMs came with the CCIP era of the USAF, where older designs were starting to age. The F-16s and F-15s from 1986-1989 started to receive 120-240 countermeasures in every succeeding iterations.
